After going 0-for-8 passing in his previous games, quarterback Greene - making his second start of the year - went 3-for-6 passing and Cove’s defense contained Garland Naaman Forest as the Bulldawgs beat the Rangers 16-9 in a Class 5A Division II area playoff game Friday night at Waco ISD Stadium.
The Bulldawgs (11-1) will get the winner of today’s Lufkin-Houston Cy-Ridge game in a Region II semifinal.
“This was two very good football teams and a very good football game,” said Cove coach Jack Welch, whose team has won multiple playoff games four straight seasons. “They have a potent running game and I think our defense shut them down tonight.”
The defense came up big when it needed to, limiting the Rangers to 160 yards rushing and keeping both Demario Broadnax and Jonathon Miller to less than 100 yards each, the first time the Rangers failed to have a 100-yard rusher all year.
The biggest run of the night for Naaman Forest (9-3) came early in the second quarter after neither team scored in the first.
The Rangers started their first possession of the quarter on their 12-yard line, and on first down Oklahoma commitment Miller busted free up the middle, then found open field to the right for an impressive 61-yard gain.
The only thing that prevented Miller from reaching the end zone was the speed of defensive back Rashad Hardy, who ran Miller down and made a shoestring tackle at the 27.
The Rangers only managed to move to the 6 and had to settle for a 24-yard field goal by Michael Bychkowski.
“Hey listen, the reason Rashad Hardy made that tackle is y’all didn’t see my invisible foot kicking him to get him on that little extra step,” Welch joked. “That was huge. That was a game-saving tackle right there. We might have come back but that would have been hard. Momentum is so big in a game like this.”
And it quickly turned to the Bulldawgs when Greene, whose first three passes were almost intercepted but instead fell incomplete, got things rolling.
On third-and-7 at the Cove 27, Greene rolled left looking to pass. When he couldn’t find his receiver, he began to run but ran into a couple of defenders. He was able to turn around and roll back to his right and saw an open Sherome Miller running parallel to him, and Greene fired a strike to him for a 9-yard gain and a first down.
Two plays later, Greene had a 20-yard run for a first down before the Bulldawgs just bullied their way down the field, with Tanner Brock ending the drive with a 3-yard touchdown run for a 7-3 lead with 3:12 left in the half.
“It was a big play,” Welch said. “It was only one completion but it was a huge completion. We had (current Baylor and former Cove standout quarterback) Robert Griffin here on the sideline who set an NCAA record for most passes thrown without an interception (to start a career).
“I thought we were going to set a record for most games without a completed pass. We finally completed a pass in three games. That one pass, even though it was just one, was huge.”
While Greene had only 13 total yards passing, the completion helped to spark a fire in him and the Bulldawgs. He finished with 64 yards rushing, including a sneak on third-and-inches that he turned into a 35-yard gain.
“He played well,” Welch added. “He still made some mistakes we have to get corrected, but I gave him a pat on the back. He played well, ran well and audibled well.”
His biggest mistake came late in the game when the Bulldawgs simply were trying to run time off the clock with a 16-3 lead and less than 4 minutes to play.
On fourth-and-inches, he lost control of the football on a sneak and the Rangers’ D.J. Hendrix picked it up and ran it back 82 yards for a score. Chris Miller and Dezmon Gibson rushed in and blocked the extra point to keep a seven-point lead for Cove at 16-9.
But that was as close as Naaman Forest would get. Cove’s defense shut down the Rangers’ final drive that began with just 1:38 to play.
“They did a great job of keeping everything in check,” Welch said of the defense. “We gave them a gift right there (with the fumble) at the end and it should not have happened. It almost put them back in the ballgame. But then to be able to stop them on that last drive was really something.
“(The Rangers) weren’t able to sustain drives, and that was my No. 1 scare going into the game, was who could sustain drives. I thought this may have been the best game our defense has played all year.”
mhood@temple-telegram.com
